A blog about poetry, literature, and art, that occasionally engages other issues of importance and interest.

Monday, September 22, 2008

You, Therefore

Of all Reginald's poems, "You, Therefore" is among those that seems to resonate most with people. It's the one I've seen most used as part of the many online tributes to Reginald that have been put up since his death. It's one of two poems I selected to be read at his memorial service (along with his last poem, "God-With-Us").

I can't say with absolute certainty that it was his favorite among his own poems, but "You, Therefore" was definitely among his favorites. From the time he wrote it, he always closed any of his many readings with this poem. Robert Philen

YOU, THEREFORE

For Robert Philen

You are like me, you will die too, but not today:you, incommensurate, therefore the hours shine:if I say to you “To you I say,” you have not beenset to music, or broadcast live on the ghostradio, may never be an oil painting orOld Master’s charcoal sketch: you area concordance of person, number, voice,and place, strawberries spread through your nameas if it were budding shrubs, how you remind meof some spring, the waters as cool and clear(late rain clings to your leaves, shaken by light wind),which is where you occur in grassy moonlight:and you are a lily, an aster, white trilliumor viburnum, by all rights mine, white starin the meadow sky, the snow still arrivingfrom its earthwards journeys, here where there isno snow (I dreamed the snow was you,when there was snow), you are my right,have come to be my night (your body takes onthe dimensions of sleep, the shape of sleepbecomes you): and you fall from the skywith several flowers, words spill from your mouthin waves, your lips taste like the sea, salt-sweet (treesand seas have flown away, I call itloving you): home is nowhere, therefore you,a kind of dwell and welcome, song after all,and free of any eden we can name

About Me

Reginald Shepherd is the editor of The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press, 2004) and of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath Press, 2008). He is the author of: Fata Morgana (2007), winner of the Silver Medal of the 2007 Florida Book Awards, Otherhood (2003), a finalist for the 2004 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, Wrong (1999), Angel, Interrupted (1996), and Some Are Drowning (1994), winner of the 1993 Associated Writing Programs’ Award in Poetry (all University of Pittsburgh Press). Shepherd's work has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies, as well as in such journals as American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and The Yale Review. It has also been widely anthologized. He is also the author of Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (Poets on Poetry Series, University of Michigan Press). Shepherd has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, the Florida Arts Council, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among other awards and honors.